Market entry and trade weighted import costs

Trade weighting is a common method of aggregating trade frictions. It will understate changes in these costs when there are non‐ad valorem trade costs and quality differences. Newly traded goods enter at higher trade costs than previously traded ones. Lower import costs shift trade to low‐quality goods with higher measured trade costs. These effects are quantitatively important. U.S. import costs fall more than twice as fast as trade weighted measures from 1974 to 2004 after the impact of shifting quality and newly traded goods is accounted for. Empirical estimates that use trade weighting will underestimate the welfare impact of trade costs.     

Institutional quality and the effectiveness of aid for trade

Trade policy barriers and high transaction costs hinder developing countries from taking the full advantages of the global trading system. In order to help developing countries overcome the problem, the World Trade Organization (WTO) launched the Aid for Trade (AFT) initiatives in its Ministerial Conference held in Hong Kong in 2005. We examine the effects of AFT inflows on bilateral trade costs facing 133 developing countries while accounting for differences in their location on the contours of various measures of institutional quality. Our results from the estimation of a mixed effects (random-intercept and random-coefficient) model indicate that institutional quality significantly affects the extent to which AFT reduces bilateral trade costs. An important policy implication of our findings is that an economically robust and sustainable reduction in bilateral trade costs facing developing countries requires the presence of both promulgated and effectively functioning institutions such as regulatory power and the rule of law.     

Games of Climate Change with International Trade

We analyse games of greenhouse gas emission reduction in which the emissions and the emission reduction costs of one country depend on other countries' emission abatement. In an analytically tractable model, we show that international trade effects on costs and emissions can either increase or decrease incentives to reduce emissions and to cooperate on emission abatement; in some specifications, optimal emission reduction is unaffected by trade. We therefore specify the model further, calibrating it to larger models that estimate the costs of emission reduction, trade effects, and impacts of climate change. If trade effects are driven by total emission reduction costs of other countries cooperation is slightly more difficult than in the case without trade effects. If trade effects are determined by relative emission reduction efforts in other countries, cooperation becomes easier. Carbon leakage does not affect our qualitative insights, although it does change the numbers.     

Investment in trade facilitating infrastructure: A political-economy analysis

This paper analyzes public investment in infrastructure that facilitates international trade. It considers a world consisting of small open economies that face transport costs for exporting or importing a particular good. Transport costs can be lowered by an improvement in transport infrastructure. National governments non-cooperatively decide about their respective country's investment level. Governments' preferences are assumed to be biased in favor of producers' interests with consequences for equilibrium investments: Exporting countries, whose producers benefit from a transport cost reduction, spend more for infrastructure than importing countries, whose producers are protected by transport costs from foreign competition. This outcome is inefficient, and governments have an incentive to cooperate internationally. The paper also incorporates bilateral trade with two goods that benefit from infrastructure improvements as well as trade that results from offshoring.     

The Foreign Trade and Sectoral Impact of Truck Road Pricing for Cross-Border Trade

Truck road pricing is on the brink of beingintroduced in a number of European countries.The experience gained from Switzerland, thefirst country worldwide to implement such adistant-dependent pricing scheme, has provedinvaluable. Nevertheless, significant questionsstill remain. The present paper attempts toprovide some clarity by analysing the welfareand sectoral impact resulting from theintroduction of truck road pricing with respectto foreign trade. It is shown that this impactcan be separated into four effects: the pureterms of trade effect, the tax revenue effect,the transit tax revenue effect and the resourcegain effect (resources set free by a reductionin transport activity). A CGE simulation ofeach of these effects identifies theirquantitative implications. Out of the foureffects the pure terms of trade effect turnsout to dominate at both the sectoral andaggregate level. It triggers a trade-inducedwelfare loss. The tax revenue effect, and lessso the transit revenue effect, mitigate thisloss. For a full road transport costinternalization a trade-induced welfare loss isquantified for Austria at 1.3%. Sensitivity ofthis and other aggregate variables is high withrespect to household reaction to transport taxrevenue refunding. The trade-induced welfareloss of variable size as explored in thisarticle counterbalances a fraction of thewelfare gain due to internalization.     

Trade,transport costs and trade imbalances: An empirical examination of international markets and backhauls

The US trade deficit has been growing for over 25 years and has been accompanied by enlarging freight rate differentials. While traditional models of trade have ignored these gaps assuming symmetry across all bilateral trade costs, the specific linkages between trade imbalances and international transportation costs have remained unexplored. Given the current trade policies, the implications arising from the endogenous adjustment of bilateral transport costs to policy-induced changes in the US trade deficit are of particular importance. To break new ground on this issue, we develop and estimate a model of international trade and transportation that accounts for the effects of persistent trade imbalances. The theoretical results are supported by our empirical analysis and indicate that bilateral transport costs adjust to a country's trade imbalance. The implication is that a unilateral import policy, for example, will cause spillover effects into the bilaterally integrated export market. To illustrate, we use our empirical results to simulate the anticipated spillover effect from the Chinese ban on waste imports. We find that China's ban and the projected 1.5% rise in the US trade deficit will lead to not only a 0.77% reduction of transport costs charged on US exports to China but also a 0.34% increase in transport costs on US imports from China.     

A natural experiment for identifying the impact of ‘natural’ trade barriers on exports

The paper investigates the relative importance of trade policy and ‘natural’ sources of export taxation in Malawi, a landlocked African economy. These sources of export taxation are in turn used to explore how export supply would respond to trade liberalisation as opposed to measures which lower other international trade costs. The findings indicate that trade policy barriers are now only a limited source of ‘true’ export taxation and that trade policy reform needs to be complemented with reforms to reduce international trade, including transport, costs.     

Countries, regions and trade: On the welfare impacts of economic integration

We study the impact of falling international trade costs and falling national transport costs on the economic geography of countries involved in an integration process. Each country is formed by two regions between which labor is mobile, whereas there is no international mobility. Goods can be traded both nationally and internationally at positive, but different, costs. A decrease in trade costs and/or in transport costs has a direct impact on prices and wages, which allows us to account for the impact of changes in these parameters on the economic geography and welfare of each country. We show that, as trade barriers fall, the benefits of integration come after its costs. We also show that national transport policies are of the beggar-thy-neighbor type. On both counts, policy coordination is required in the process of economic integration.     

The importance of the Logistics Performance Index in international trade

Logistics and transport increasingly play a pivotal role in international trade relations. The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) analyses differences between countries in terms of customs procedures, logistics costs and the quality of the infrastructure for overland and maritime transport. The aim of this article is to analyse the impact that each of these components has on trade in emerging economies using a gravity model. Furthermore, the study also attempts to detect possible advances in logistics in developing countries, which are grouped into five regions (Africa, South America, Far East, Middle East and Eastern Europe) by comparing the first LPI data published in 2007 with the most recent data, released in 2012. The results obtained reveal that improvements in any of the components of the LPI can lead to significant growth in a country’s trade flows. Specifically, LPI components are becoming increasingly important for international trade in many countries in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe.     

Does trade stimulate product quality upgrading?

This paper investigates whether increased import competition leads firms to engage in incremental innovation reflected in product quality upgrading using Chilean manufacturing firm‐product data and measuring product quality with unit values (prices). We identify causal effects of import competition using an effective trade barrier measure – transport costs – as instruments for import penetration ratios across industries. Transport costs have a negative and significant effect on product quality. The evidence suggests that estimated unit value increases capture product quality upgrading, imports’ competition effects drive quality upgrading, and benefits depend on firms’ industrial specialization. Easier access to intermediate inputs also fosters quality upgrading.     

Distorted Trade Barriers: A Dissection of Trade Costs in a “Distorted Gravity” Model

It is common in the trade literature to use iceberg transport costs to represent both tariffs and shipping costs alike. However, in models with monopolistic competition these are not identical trade restrictions. This difference is driven by how the two costs affect the extensive margin. We illustrate these differences in a gravity model. We show theoretically that trade flows are more elastic with respect to tariffs than transport costs and find a linear relationship between the elasticities with respect to tariffs, iceberg transport costs, and fixed market costs. We empirically validate these results using data on US product‐level imports.     

Development through synergistic reforms

For many less developed countries production of high quality output is a precondition for firms to become exporters. Institutional deficiencies that raise costs of high quality production therefore limit the positive impact that trade facilitation can have on income. Consequently, institutional reforms that reduce costs of high quality production and trade reform have synergistic effects. In contrast, institutional reforms that reduce costs of low quality production (e.g., reforms that disproportionately benefit small businesses) interfere with the impact of trade reform. We obtain these results in a heterogeneous firm model that displays standard “industry rationalization” responses to reduced trade costs.     

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENTS AND FALLING TRADE COSTS: BOON OR BANE?*

This article looks at two features of globalization, namely, productivity improvements and falling trade costs, and explores their effect on welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogenous firms and technological asymmetries. Contrary to received wisdom, and for reasons different from adverse terms of trade effects, it is shown that improvements in a partner's productivity must hurt us. Moreover, falling trade costs can raise welfare in the technologically advanced country while reducing it in the backward one, if technological asymmetries are large enough.     

The trade reducing effects of restrictions on liner shipping

The costs of shipping containerized cargo on liner vessels play a pivotal role in determining a country's integration into international trade. We examine how policy governing the liner shipping sector affects maritime transport costs and seaborne trade flows. Using a novel dataset of services trade policy information, we find that restrictions, particularly on foreign investment, significantly increase maritime transport costs. The cost-inflating effect ranges from 26% to 68%, and the resultant reduction in trade flows from 48% to 77%, depending on the level of restrictiveness. We estimate the elasticity of seaborne trade flows with respect to distance to be nearly unity, and are able to disentangle the direct effect of distance from the one that is operating indirectly through higher maritime transport costs. Since the bulk of global merchandise goods trade is seaborne, the magnitude of frictions identified in this paper and their spatial distribution have ramifications for connectivity and growth.     

Trade Costs,Resource Reallocation and Productivity in Developing Countries

New trade models with heterogeneous firms suggest that international trade plays an important role in reallocating resources from low to high productivity plants. We use plant‐level data from Chile and measures of trade costs that include tariffs and freight rates to analyze the importance of this trade‐induced market selection process. We find that trade costs affect the reallocation process through the various channels predicted by the theory; however, the effects are approximately half of those reported for the US. We also find that while the tariff rate is responsible for preventing some of the reallocation, transportation costs have the most limiting role in terms of the number of channels affected.     

Regional and environmental impacts of expanding the heavy duty vehicle charge to the secondary road network in Austria

In road freight transport a particularly large share of the total social costs generated is not borne by road users. To correct for this, many European countries use pricing instruments specifically targeted at heavy duty vehicles, so far targeted almost exclusively at the primary road network. In line with the overall EU objective of greening the transport sector, we discuss the possibility of expanding the road charging system to a more comprehensive, area-wide one. The degree to which peripheral or disadvantaged regions are hit over-proportionally by such a measure remains an open question in the literature on heavy duty vehicle road pricing. We combine an input–output and a computable general equilibrium approach to analyse the case for Austria. We find that while it is not the sectors of highest economic importance in the periphery regions that are hit by the charge, those sectors that are hit are those which are relatively more important in peripheral regions (with up to a twofold share in value added) and for whom production price impacts tend to be relatively strong. The short term consumer price effect of extending the current primary road network charges to the secondary network is found not to exceed 0.15%. In terms of the principles of sustainable transport we find that extending charge coverage is compatible with most core principles, the exception being the principle of regional need. In terms of environmental impact, for example, expanding heavy duty vehicle charges to the secondary road network reduces heavy duty vehicle kilometres in the overall network (and related emissions) by roughly 2%. However, in order to comply with the needs principle, suitable complementary transfer policies need to be designed and implemented for peripheral regions.     

THE CLOSED-LOOP EFFECTS OF MARKET INTEGRATION IN A DYNAMIC DUOPOLY

This paper develops a dynamic game model of reciprocal dumping to reconsider welfare effects of market integration, i.e. reductions in transport costs. We show that welfare under trade is unambiguously less than welfare under autarky for any level of transport costs, which is impossible in static models where trade is profitable if the transport cost is low enough. This is because the negative effect through closed-loop property of feedback strategies dominates the positive effects.     

Foreign market entry,upstream market power,and endogenous mode of downstream competition

In a differentiated duopoly model of trade and FDI featuring both horizontal and vertical product differentiation, we examine whether globalization and trade policy measures can generate welfare gains by leading firms to change their mode of competition. We show that when a high-quality foreign variety is manufactured under large frictions due to upstream monopoly power, a foreign firm can become a Bertrand competitor against a Cournot local rival in equilibrium, especially when the relative product quality of the foreign variety is sufficiently high and trade costs are sufficiently low (implying higher input price distortions due to double marginalization). Our results suggest that such strategic asymmetry is welfare improving and that the availability of FDI as an alternative to trade can make welfare-enhancing strategic asymmetry even more likely, especially when both input trade costs and fixed investment costs are sufficiently low and trade costs in final goods are sufficiently large.     

Examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities — Part 2: Review of input-output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade

This paper offers a detailed review of recently described single- and multi-region input-output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services. It is the second part of a two-part contribution. In Part 1 [Turner, K., Lenzen, M., Wiedmann, T. and Barrett, J. in press. Examining the Global Environmental Impact of Regional Consumption Activities — Part 1: A Technical Note on Combining Input-Output and Ecological Footprint Analysis; Ecological Economics.] we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter-regional and inter-national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of Ecological Footprints.A large number of such environment-economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi-region, multi-sector input-output framework. This has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability. We identify six major models that employ multi-sector, multi-region input-output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade. Results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe, land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi-region, multi-sector and multi-directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation. Only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade, such as the Ecological Footprint, can be derived.     

Fuel Efficiency Improvements: Feedback Mechanisms and Distributional Effects in the Oil Market

We study the interactions between fuel efficiency improvements in the transport sector and the oil market, where the efficiency improvements are policy-induced in certain regions of the world. We are especially interested in feedback mechanisms of fuel efficiency such as the rebound effect, carbon leakage and the “green paradox”, but also the distributional effects for oil producers. An intertemporal numerical model of the international oil market is introduced, where OPEC-Core producers have market power. We find that the rebound effect has a noticeable effect on the transport sector, with the magnitude depending on the oil demand elasticity. In the benchmark simulations, we calculate that almost half of the energy savings may be lost to a direct rebound effect and an additional 10% to oil price adjustments. In addition, there is substantial intersectoral leakage to other sectors through lower oil prices in the regions that introduce the policy. There is a small green paradox effect in the sense that oil consumption increases initially when the fuel efficiency measures are gradually implemented. Finally, international carbon leakage will be significant if policies are not implemented in all regions; we estimate leakage rates of 35% or higher when only major consuming regions implement fuel economy policies. Non-OPEC producers will to a larger degree than OPEC producers cut back on its oil supply as a response to fuel efficiency policies due to high production costs.